Most students at Mason take jobs at local Falls Church restaurants. You’ll hear about the crowd of kids working at Famous Dave’s or Dogwood Tavern, or the couple of high schoolers that hold down jobs at Starbucks. Concepcion Pereira, or “Concho” as his peers call him, is not one of these students. His job takes him up and down the East Coast trading cars between dealerships.
Pereira has been working at the Ted Britt Ford dealership in Fairfax for more than a year. He works three days a week; four hour shifts on weekdays, and eight hour shifts on weekends. So far, this sounds like a typical job for a teenager.
“[When I started working there] they told me I was going to drive around and make sure the lot is full. If they needed a car, I would go wherever they needed me to go and get the car for them,” Pereira said.
Wherever, in this case, is not an exaggeration. Pereira travels for hours at a time to retrieve cars from different dealerships. His job has taken him as far south as Georgia. In cases when the distance this long, he has to take a plane there, and then drive back to Virginia with a new car.
“New York, I’ve been there once. Philly, North Carolina. I enjoy driving long distance. It’s relaxing, and I get to meet cool people that you wouldn’t usually get to meet,” said Pereira. “Like when you go to the south part of Virginia. In the city [Falls Church], you don’t meet people like that who don’t go to college and stay where they are. They don’t leave town, they stay there forever. It’s cool to listen to their stories.”
On his long distance drives, Pereira finds himself meeting people of all types. One of his most memorable encounters happened when he got lost on his way to Philadelphia.
“I wasn’t paying attention, so I took the wrong turn, and I ended up at this convent where nuns lived. It was kind of weird, but it was fun.”
Because of the amount of time spent on the road, it’s hard to believe that any parent would be fine letting their kid have a job like Pereira’s, which is probably why you’ll find more Mason students bussing tables at Argias instead of working at a local car dealership. Pereira admits that although his father found the job for him, getting his mother on board was not easy. She was concerned about him missing school. He convinced her that the company would only send him on drives when he was out of school.
“She was cool after that,” said Pereira.
With the sometimes unpredictable schedule, Pereira’s job also requires him to sacrifice a lot of his free time. His normal hours are extended when he drives long distances, and it’s not always easy to tell when he’ll be back from a trip. But he enjoys this aspect of his job.
“You get to go to different places. Like where you’ve been before, but you’ve been with your family. This time you’re just going alone and enjoying the ride,” said Pereira.
